It appears your JavaScript is currently disabled, resulting in some content and functionality of our sites to be limited or completely unavailable. Please enable your JavaScript to avoid compatibility issues.

All posts by Daniel Carlson

Listen to a web event on “Human Factors/Crew Resource Management: Perspectives for Inputs to Risk Management Framework” presented by Phil Grossweiler on 2 September. Oil and gas industry interest in applying human factors concepts in managing risk has grown significantly since the Macondo spill. The range of literature, industry studies, workshops, and presentations covering human factors (HF) topics is extensive. Crew resource management (CRM) is one of the elements of human factors also getting a lot of recent attention. This presentation will discuss and suggest several key takeaways — potential “low-hanging fruit” where human factors and CRM can help manage enterprise risk.

Students from Montana Tech took the top spot at the inaugural Student Challenge at the 2015 SPE E&P Health, Safety, Security and Environmental Conference—Americas in Denver, which ran 16-18 March. The contest, which was sponsored by ExxonMobil, pitted six teams of five students against one another. The competition was modeled after the annual PetroBowl, held at SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition.

“The HSE Student Challenge pilot‎ enabled SPE to connect with a new group of environmental engineering students who were unfamiliar with SPE, and it provided an exciting, dynamic alternative to a traditional student paper competition,” said conference committee member Trey Shaffer.

Student teams from Oklahoma State University, Texas Tech University, Montana Tech, Colorado School of Mines, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Oklahoma squared off in three rounds of questions about the oil and gas industry. Each round consisted of two sets of quick-answer questions separated by a series of questions requiring written answers. After some minor technical glitches and some discussion about rules, Montana Tech pulled ahead to victory. The members of the team each received iPads and were invited to sit on a discussion panel. At a movie night event, held in the evening after the Student Challenge, attendees watched Energy’s Crossroads: Pinedale, WY, a film from the Rational Middle series. The students from the winning team joined Jennifer Cross, sociology professor at the Colorado State University, and Gregory Kallenberg, the director of the film, on a discussion panel after the film.

Hear a web event on “Managing Project Complexity” presented by Howard Duhon on 23 June. Most projects overrun their budget and/or schedule significantly and/or produce less oil/gas than promised. The complexity of our projects and project design teams is at least partially responsible for project failure rates. An SPE Work Study group is presently addressing the impact of complexity and its contribution to project failures. This presentation will include preliminary findings from that study.

The SPE Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility Technical Discipline is pleased to announce the formation of a new technical section to give its members, regardless of discipline, an increased awareness and opportunity to network in the area of sustainable development.

This section seeks to:

• Exchange sustainable development technical information
• Support members in acquiring sustainable development competencies
• Raise awareness of the role sustainable development plays in the oil and gas industry
• Improve performance through better application of sustainable development principles and practices
• Liaise with and learn from other industry organizations

Deepen your learning and share your insights on the subject during discussions at monthly virtual meetings, forums, and workshops. Join now to engage in discussions with other SPE members. Enjoy the convenience of online collaboration and the benefits of at least one face-to-face meeting each year. Learn more and join today!

Hear a web event on “Scrubbers: Advances in High Capacity Scrubber Internals and Performance Boosting with Inline Pre-Separation” presented by Danny Thierens on 17 June. In continuation with our theme on Scrubber Designs, this webinar will focus on high capacity internals advancements and services in which these internals may be applied. Enhanced separation efficiency and/or capacity can be further obtained when combined with a pre-separator upstream of the high capacity scrubber in the form of an inline cyclonic separator. Various concept and layouts will be presented and discussed.

Give others a chance to learn from your experiences, ideas, and best practices! Themed “Sustaining Our Future Through Innovation and Collaboration,” the 2016 SPE International Conference and Exhibition on HSSE-SR will take place 11-13 April 2016 in Stavanger, Norway. Papers are needed for the following technical categories:

Flow assurance engineers routinely encounter challenging problems relating to multiphase flow simulation. Some of these problems we can be trained to anticipate and deal with, whereas others emerge from strange, dark places and are simply, well, baffling! Drawing on experiences from a wide variety of industry projects across the world, a select few of these cases will be demonstrated in a simplified and sanitized form using PIPESIM. You will see that some problems defy intuition and that some methods we commonly use defy physics. The takeaway is advice on how to identify such problems before it is too late.

Good choices are the result of an effective decision-making process and reducing the effects of cognitive biases. Decision-making occurs at all levels in organizations, from strategic to operational choices. On 20 May, join Margaret Crichton for a webinar about how to make great decisions for your organization. Topics will include: